Heal Over
by beezeswim
Summary: [Addison] She recalls late nights with text books and cold Chinese food and is reminded that you can’t ever outrun the past so she just creates a new future.


A/N – OK so I saw a picture of Kate Walsh and Dave Annable and I was inspired (they are so damn hot). If you don't watch Brothers & Sisters you should. It's dramatic, funny, character driven, and real, it's everything GA is when GA is it as its best, because it's about family, and it's about people who love each other. Now that I'm done selling B&S- read & oh yeah you should def. Google those pics.

**I guess we both know that we're in over our heads**

His eyes are broken, but somehow he's managed to put himself back together. She's got her life boxed up and the pieces of her heart are jammed into a suitcase.

They meet in a bar, even though he doesn't drink. He has a last name like hers, it connotes power and wealth, but Justin Walker's family is apparently nothing like hers.

She recognizes herself in his eyes, and they both looked death in the eyes and survived. Addison doesn't expect to like LA, because it's sunny all the time and it's so far away from her East Coast upbringing.

The hospital in Seattle was so haunted by ghosts of her past, and everywhere she looked she was surrounded by the shadows of her past indiscretions.

Justin and her are friends first, he tells her knock knock jokes over diner food, and when she's with him she feels alive.

Addison Sheppard hasn't' felt this real since she was 22 and consuming tequila by the bottle, not the glass. His apartment is small and dirty, filled with possibility and big dreams. When they watch old movies and eat left over pizza she recalls late nights with text books and cold Chinese food and is reminded that you can't ever outrun the past.

It's one of those unusually chilly nights when she meets his family. She adores them, and they are loud and nosily loving, everything she's always wanted, but never had. Nora laughs with Sarah and Kitty in the kitchen over a bottle of wine while she sees a flash of a moment she was denied, but then Justin throws Cooper over shoulders and winks at her and she just imagines tomorrow.

Sunday dinners become a pattern, and she has taken to turning her pager off Saturday morning and leaving it off the rest of the weekend. She's become one of the surgeons who realize the hospital won't collapse if she's not there.

After six months of dinners she finds herself pressed against him on the front porch, whispering 'mine' into his open mouth. Giggles, clearing throats, and murmured 'finally' interrupt as the entire Walker family spills onto the porch.

The moment ended but it's obvious they won't be 'just friends' again.

Suddenly she realizes her hearts not in pieces anymore, and she places it in his hands. He makes her palms sweat, and gives her butterflies, and she decides she's never letting him go.

It's the beginning and the end of Addison Sheppard's life, she wakes every morning to stubble burn and the smell of sandalwood. His apartment becomes theirs and she hires a cleaning lady. He goes to night classes and she quits her job and begins working in a free clinic.

She giggles on the phone with Savvy and feels beautiful as she knots the cord around her fingers. Because he's reading the paper at the kitchen table but he's really watching her and wondering how fast he can get her clothes off.

He gets down on one knee, and she cries. The wedding and reception are a loud and casual affair at Nora's, the sun shines, she's got one hand wrapped around a margarita and the other's entwined with Justin's. She doesn't invite the New York past, or the ghosts that lurk in Seattle, and only regrets it right before.

Mark loved weddings.

On her two year anniversary she wonders why this works, and her and Derek never seemed to fit. She's pregnant and he takes roll after roll of film. He finds a career in photography, and she finally finds happiness being on the other end of the delivery room.

They name the baby Aidan William Walker, after their fathers.

Three years later Samantha is born and she marvels at how well running away from the past worked out, because now she has a future.


End file.
